Michael Crick has finally caught up with what Guido told you in Daily Star Sunday on 11 March:

LEAVING the Treasury after Labour’s General Election defeat, the Birmingham MP Liam Byrne famously left a note for his successor which simply read: “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.” After the uproar this joke caused, Byrne, right, kept his bald head down as a backroom figure for Ed Miliband. Dubbed “Baldamort” by David Cameron, he wants to escape what could be a long opposition. We hear Byrne is being encouraged by the likes of Alan Johnson to seek Labour’s nomination as the candidate for Mayor of Birmingham. Labour sources seem almost certain he will throw his hat in the Bull-ring. With Brum having a budget of £3.5billion, though, that note might yet come back to haunt him.

It doesn’t say much for the leadership when the person in charge of the policy review for the Labour Party has had enough and is ready to jump ship. A bit like the Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party quitting to go and be a police commissioner…